Darwin was plunged into darkness when the power went out for 12 hours. Picture: MICHAEL FRANCHI Source: NTNews

The managing director of Power and Water Corporatiohas broken his silence nearly three days after a widespread power outage plunged Darwin and Palmerston into a blackout  lasting up to 12 hours in some suburbs.

PowerWater boss John Baskerville said his priority had been to PowerWater and not to responding to media queries, and as such, he needed to make sure the ­restoration of power was “carefully managed”.

This comes as the Chief Minister’s office yesterday refused to respond to questions about Essential Services Minister Willem Westra van Holthe’s absence during what is thought to be one of the worst blackouts experienced in the Northern Territory.

Mr van Holthe is in Vietnam on a work trade trip and has been posting regular snaps on his Facebook page since Tuesday.

Mr Baskerville, who has 40 years experience working in the power industry, said Wednesday’s “catastrophic” event meant his main responsibility was to ensure the safety of staff who had been working around the clock. He said staff had worked tirelessly to restore electricity to the city following a circuit malfunction at the Hudson Creek substation at 1.20am on Wednesday.

“With anything like the catastrophic event we encountered, there is a lot of work to be done to assess the cause and rectification time,” Mr Baskerville said. “My main responsibility was to ensure my staff were safe.’’

Despite requests for interviews, Mr Baskerville initially failed to front media. Instead it was left to spokesman and remote operations boss Jim Bamba to field queries.

“While the media have their expectations, my priority now, and always, is Power and Water,” Mr Baskerville said.

“During the outage, the restoration process had to be carefully managed. My responsibility is not to be in front of a television camera or talking to media on the phone, my responsibility is to be managing and supporting the people doing the difficult work of ­restoring the network.”

Mr Baskerville said PowerWater was still investigating and would provide a “warts-and-all” report to the Minister.

An initial report – PowerWater’s internal investigation – was ­released by the government yesterday. It showed the circuit breaker malfunctioned after maintenance, prompting the protection ­system to kick in.

“That investigation is nowhere near complete. I will have engineers working with me over the weekend to continue with the investigations. It will be thorough and on the network side of our organisation, plus generation and systems control,” Mr Baskerville said.